Trouble in Mesopotamia

The looming threat of civil war in Iraq can be traced back to at least
three different historical events. The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham
(ISIS) surprised most observers by seizing control of cities and towns
in Western and Northern Iraq in the last few days. Using the northern
part of Syria as a springboard and training ground, ISIS attacked Iraq’s
second largest city-Mosul-and Saddam Hussain’s hometown, Tikrit. Iraq’s
national army did not defend the cities and two divisions of the force
(almost 30,000 men) simply turned and ran in the face of the assault. In
December 2013, parts of Fallujah and Ramadi (in the Anbar province)
were overtaken by the ragtag army made up of militants from around the
world; an “Islamist” legion of sorts.

The first fault line of this
conflict was drawn more than fourteen hundred years ago in the Arabian
Peninsula. The conflict that arose after the death of the Prophet
Muhammad regarding the right to succession as Caliph blew out into a
schism that continues to this day. Sunnis believe that Abu Bakar, the
senior most companion of the Prophet was rightly chosen as Caliph while
Shias are of the view that Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and a member of his
clan deserved the position. This internecine conflict has caused
innumerable deaths whenever one group has gained ascendancy over the
other. The Umayyad Caliphs were ‘Sunni’ and Shias suffered heavily under
their reign. When the Abbasids (who claimed to be descendants of Abbas,
Ali’s Uncle) rose to power, they unleashed a wave of terror towards the
Umayyads. The last Umayyad caliph was tracked down to a church in Nile
Delta, where his head was chopped off and his tongue was fed to a cat.

The
animosity between the Umayyads and Abbasids was apparently political in
nature but the underlying cause was sectarian. The second event that
casts a shadow over the emergence of ISIS is the Sykes-Picot agreement
that was signed during the First World War. It was a secret agreement
signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and France, with
the assent of Russia, defining their proposed spheres of influence and
control in the Middle East should the Triple Entente succeed in
defeating the Ottoman Empire in 1916. Mandates from the League of
Nations gave France control of Syria and Lebanon. Britain held mandates
over Palestine, Iraq, and the newly created Transjordan. In this way,
new countries were created out of an existing monolith based on no
particular parameters. There were no physical boundaries (like a river
or mountains etc) between the new countries and arbitrary lines drawn in
sand divided them. As a result, there are no well-defined,
internationally recognized boundaries between countries in the Middle
East till today (Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was based on the fact
that the boundary between the two countries was never properly
established).

The last piece of this puzzle is the American invasion
of Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein was ruling only through sheer force, and
not because he was immensely popular amongst the common people. His
Ba’ath party favored the Sunni minority of Iraq and oppressed the Shia
majority. Saddam’s regime targeted Shiite groups such as the ‘Dawa
Party’, of which the current Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri Al-Maliki was a
member. His forces used chemical weapons against the Kurdish population
during their reign of terror. But Iraq did not possess any weapons of
mass destruction (WMDs), which was the raison d’être presented by the
United States before launching their war. In February 2011, the defector
who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological
weapons’ programme admitted that he lied about his story, as reported by
The Guardian.

Following the war, American policymakers made huge
tactical errors, which resulted in a Shia-Sunni armed conflict that is
yet to be resolved. Gideon Rose, in his book “How Wars End: Why We
Always Fight the Last Battle,” is of the view that, “wars actually have
two equally important aspects. One is negative, or coercive; this is the
part about fighting. The other is positive, and is all about politics.
And this is the part that, as in Iraq, is usually overlooked or
misunderstood.”

In the 2010 parliamentary elections in Iraq, a
secular Iraqi leader named Ayad Allawi gained the majority of votes but
he was not allowed to form the government due to a contentious court
ruling. The Americans could intervene and point out how this contravened
the Iraqi constitution but they hedged their bets by supporting Maliki,
who spent most of his life as a violent Shia activist.

ISIS and its
methods are so extreme that even Al-Qaeda distanced itself from the
group. They were initially bankrolled by Sunni Arab states including
Saudi Arabia. A recent news report mentioned that before capturing
Mosul, ISIS’s total cash and assets were $875 Million. Afterwards, with
the money they robbed from banks and the value of military supplies they
looted, they could add another $1.5 billion to that. They recently
released a series of photos titled “The Destruction of Sykes-Picot.”Iraq’s
neighbors, including Iran, Turkey and Syria are alarmed by the rise of
ISIS and at least Iran and Turkey are contemplating the use of direct or
indirect force to stall their advances. Turkey is supporting the Iraqi
Kurds who seem to possess the only military force that has defeated
militants and taken control over the vital city of Kirkuk. Iran’s clergy
has called upon able-bodied men to take up arms and defend the holy
sites of Shi’ism.

The most worrying aspect of this conflict is the
potential for a Shia-Sunni civil war as ISIS fighters gain control over
Sunni-dominant areas in Iraq; the Iraqi forces that deserted without
fighting also had a lot of Sunni members. Sunni groups such as Majlis
Thuwar Al Anbar, Jaish al-Mujahideen and Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah are
providing tactical support to ISIS. It would seem that deep trouble now
brews in Mesopotamia.

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About Me

Intrepid Traveler, more interested in Political Economy and History than Medicine, Politically Liberal. I support historical Revisionism(rewriting Pakistan's textbooks). have written for Dawn Blogs(English and Urdu), The News, The Friday Times,The News on Sunday,The Nation, Journal of Pakistan Medical Students, Express Tribune Blogs, Pakistan Today, ViewPointOnline.net and Pak Tea House. Currently Assistant Editor at Pak Tea House. Interested in general knowledge.